Posts tagged Home Improvement

Looking to expand your house as a whole? Thinking of adding another level to your floor plan? Hoping to increase appeal to potential homebuyers with large families? We’ve got good news. There are ways to upgrade your home and make your house stand out. Like adding a dormer.

What Is a Dormer?
Today, dormers are popping up in houses more and more. A dormer is one large and open floor of a house: No walls separate bedrooms. The staircase from the floor below directly opens into this wide, open space. The dormer is usually used to place numerous beds in. This could be used as a bedroom for numerous kids, a place to keep overnight guests, an open space to host a party or an oversized room to use as a media room, a hobby room or anything you prefer! A dormer basically provides your house with the massive room you always wished you had.

How to Add a Dormer
You can build the dormer onto your house yourself! For a video tutorial from BobVila.com, click here. For a more traditional and less risky route, hire a contractor to build the dormer.

The first step is to obtain permits that allow you to add onto your home. Once that is complete, you’ll need materials for siding, insulation, drywall, roofing and windows. You’ll need to remove the roofing already covering the area for the dormer, then attach the walls, then build the roof and then work on the insulation and windows. Or if you already have an upper floor of bedrooms, you could remove the walls that separate these rooms and create one large room.

Dormers are just one more new way to make your house stand out from the rest!

If you’re looking for a new way to incorporate green, eco-friendly living into your home, look no further than the end of your driveway. Now, eco-friendly mailboxes are available that are solely made from recycled materials and are still durable during a storm. With green living on the rise and potential homebuyers looking for eco-friendly houses, displaying an eco-friendly mailbox will be a sure sign that green living is a top priority in your household.

What type of durable, recycled materials can you use for a mailbox? Recycled street signs are made of an ideal metal with the purpose of outlasting any type of weather condition. Purchase an already made mailbox online, or contact your local police department or municipal building about acquiring a recycled street sign to be used as a mailbox. Do not try to obtain one on your own. Recycled license plates can also be attached together to form a mailbox, and old tool boxes are made with heavy duty materials that could work as a mailbox.

When you find the material that you want to use, simply shape it into a boxed form and attach it to your old mailbox post or to a wooden beam. You can also put your original, retired mailbox to good use as a toolbox, a money box or a composter. The idea of recycling really does go along way when you realize the multiple uses available for items.

With the increase in telecommuting employment opportunities and more and more people working from home, it makes sense to make sure that you have a well-designed home office. Here are a few factors to consider when creating your professional home office:

Location

You’ll want to place your office in a convenient location, but privacy is also important so you won’t be distracted by outside noise. You could even consider making a private entrance from the outside so your business associates don’t have to walk through the whole house to get to the office. This is especially convenient if you run a business from home!

Furniture

Comfort is key when it comes to furnishing your home office. You’ll want to find a chair that gives you good support for a good length of time so you can get a lot of work done, and your desk should be set up so you’re not straining to see your computer or constantly reaching for your keyboard or mouse. Also think about using bookshelves to display literature or decorative keepsakes. Extra seating may come in handy when you need to get away from your desk, so consider adding a comfortable chair or a small couch.

Lighting

Ideally you’ll want as much natural light as possible. But even with several windows, you may still need a brighter work space. Recessed lighting is an elegant way to bring a subtle glow to the entire space, while task lamps can illuminate specific areas like your desk that require more direct light.

Storage

By getting rid of clutter in your work space, you’ll be able to focus on the task at hand. Keep an organized junk drawer in your desk for all your odds and ends, stuff that doesn’t really have a designated spot. The bookshelves that you use for display can also offer extra storage space, and file cabinets are a great way to keep all your paperwork organized.

Whether you currently work from home, hope to in the future or even if you just want a place to manage personal files, bills and so on, a home office is a valuable asset. Follow these tips for setting yours up, and you’ll make the most the space!

Update, clean, declutter, depersonalize. These are tips you constantly hear when you’re trying to sell your house. But as you try to update the house enough to look presentable, clean and modern, you are also trying to not spend too much of your hard-earned cash. So how do you sell with an unfinished basement?

It’s easy. An unfinished basement is not always a bad thing. Instead, it’s sometimes a perk. Not everyone wants a finished basement; people need space for storage. All you need to do is highlight the benefits of an unfinished basement with your potential homebuyers.

Perks:

• An unfinished basement can be your messy, hidden escape from the clean, perfectly tidy upstairs. It’s the place that no guest needs to see, and the place that you can do whatever you wish with.

• Is the attic hard to get to? Are the closets too small? Don’t know what to do with all of the boxes that you brought with from the old house? Store your winter clothes in the basement during the summer, and vise versa. Keep your holiday decorations stored away in boxes in the basement. Keep boxes from the move in the basement until you decide what to do with them.

• Don’t have a laundry room? Want to use the laundry room as a mudroom or a pet room? The unfinished basement is the perfect cool atmosphere to store the washer and dryer, and it offers way more space to hang clothes to dry naturally, to iron, and to hand-wash clothes in a tub.

• Live in a rainy, constantly wet area? An unfinished basement can save you from flood damage. If your basement floods, all you have to do is mop up the water. You don’t need to worry about carpet damage, furniture damage, wallpaper damage, window treatment damage, and every other kind of damage that goes along with a finished room.

• It’s one less area to furnish, and one less area to clean. Enough said.

• If you want a finished basement, beginning with an unfinished basement allows you unlimited potential and ideas to work with! Paint the walls any color, add as much insulation as you feel is necessary, add walls wherever you wish to add rooms, install a bathroom if you’d like, add the flooring of your choice, build a wet bar if you wish: turn the space into the basement of your dreams and increase your equity!

Does that mean that you should leave your unfinished basement as is when you’re showing your home? Not necessarily. There are still improvements that you could make for your potential homebuyers, even if you choose not to finish it now.

These include:

• Cleaning up your cluttered boxes of storage. Close and stack your boxes into a neat pile that lines the walls. Keep the space in the middle of the room open so potential homebuyers can visually see how large the space is.

• Adding an accessory here and there, such as a weight bench, an ironing board or a pullout couch. This will allow potential homebuyers to imagine the space as more than what it is, such as a fitness room, a laundry room or rec room.

• Cleaning the floors and walls with soap and water. Destroy cobwebs and diminish dirt. If you have a lot of bugs, use a pesticide before cleaning. Just because the space is unfinished doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be clean.

• Using caulk to fill holes in the walls or ceiling. It is an inexpensive way to make the basement look better and to contain better insulation.

• If you have clotheslines set up in the laundry area, take down clothes while showing the house. You want potential homebuyers concentrating on your basement’s potential, not your hanging undergarments!

A decrease in temperatures could mean an increase of unwanted pests joining your household. This year, instead of purchasing another pesticide, try these natural pest control tips.

According to a report by Environment Health Perspectives, 83 percent of American households contain up to four different pesticide products, even though these products often cause health risks, such as allergies, an immunity system breakdown or even brain effects. In 1993, 140,000 poison cases were reported to poison control centers. Pesticides have up to 300 active ingredients and up to 1,700 inert ingredients! That leaves room for a lot of health risks, just for the sake of ridding your house of unwanted pests.

With that said, there are natural, green ways to keep pesticides away, presented by care2.com. To prevent pests from entering your home in the first place, try these tips:

• Get rid of standing water or damp areas. Immediately clean up spills, even if it’s just water; clean and dry dishes right away; fix leaky faucets.

• Sweep and vacuum weekly, especially in the kitchen. Wipe down counters and tables. Clean up all those crumbs! Store food in tightly closed containers, and consider wrapping plastic bags around boxes that pests could bite through.

• Re-caulk and seal cracks and openings in the walls, floors and ceilings. Line doors and windows with weather stripping; add screens to windows and doors.

• Change bed linens regularly, and if you have pets, wash them regularly.

• Take the garbage out often, and only throw food away in a covered garbage container or in a composting bucket. Keep the recycle bin in the garage.

If you follow these rules and pests still find their way into your home, purchase a non-toxic pesticide. You can even make homemade pest-repellents, such as an all-natural fly strip made with brown packing tape dipped in a mixture of honey, sugar and water. To repel fleas, use scents of rosemary, lavender, vinegar or lemon.

As evening temperatures cool, you may want to stay cooped up inside, cuddled in front of the television. But now is really the time to cuddle up by an outdoor fire, while toasting marshmallows, telling ghost stories and gazing up at the stars. By adding a fire pit to your backyard, you won’t only get to enjoy more time outdoors while keeping warm, but you will also add an impressive feature to your home when it’s time to sell!

How do you build a firepit that is easy to install and that looks attractive? It’s simple. Here are tips from thisoldhouse.com to help you through the process:

• When deciding where to build the fire pit, first check your local codes to see what the rules are in your area with open flame. Choose an area that is a safe distance from your house, fence, shed, gardens, overhanging branches of trees or anything flammable.

• Choose stone or brick to use around your fire pit. Consider concrete blocks that look like stone, but that are easier to use because they are flat on the top and bottom. Choose stones that curve to make a circle. Measure an area of 36 to 44 inches in diameter, and then make sure you buy enough stone and masonry adhesive to cover this area.

• Dig a 12-inch trench straight down into the ground, to keep the pit stabilized. First set a layer of gravel around the edges, and then lay the stones, gluing them together as you go with masonry adhesive. The top layer of stones should end up resting about a foot above the ground. A steel ring is a good add-on, in order to keep the stone bricks away from heat damage as much as possible.

• Once the bricks are all laid, fill the fire pit ground with six inches of gravel. Wait to light a fire until two days after you glue the stones or bricks together.

• Fill the fire pit with wood and light up! Enjoy a bonfire whenever you please, and if you’re selling your house, be sure to include the fire pit in your Buy Owner advertisement!

With seasonal changes comes seasonal upkeep. Each season presents new chores to keep up with, especially outside. When your house is for sale, it’s vital that you keep up with the curb appeal of your home. When potential buyers see the Buy Owner sign in the front yard, all they have to go off of is the external appearance. When potential buyers visit for an open house, the external appearance is what they judge first. In your ads, the first picture potential buyers will view is usually of the front exterior.

• In order to keep up with the curb appeal as much as possible, consider the natural elements. Fall means raking up leaves and trimming bushes. Winter means shoveling the snow off the driveway and the walkway. Spring means cleaning out the gutters, planting flowers and fixing paint chips. Summer means planting more flowers and mowing the lawn.

• Every couple weeks, stand in front of your house and just look at it. It’s often hard to judge your own home, so consider asking a neighbor or friend for advice too. By stepping away from the home and looking at it from the view of potential buyers, you’re more likely to notice little nicks, cracks or stains that you would otherwise pass right over.

• After taking a good look at your house from a distance, look closely at each individual aspect. Browse the entire scope of the roof and the siding, using binoculars. Walk up the driveway and walkway, while closely reviewing the surface. Stroll through the grass, look up in the trees and brush cobwebs off the bushes. Take your time.

• Handle one issue at a time, so you don’t feel overwhelmed. If the driveway could use a renewal, plan a day to resurface it. Once that chore is complete, wash around the windows that you noticed were collecting spots. Then, trim bushes and pick dead flowers from the pots.

• Continue to enjoy your curb appeal. If you’re proud of the appearance of your home, others will take notice. Relax on the front porch and breathe in the fresh air. Decorate the walkway with annual flowerpots, or with pumpkins and gourds. Build a snowman in the winter. Make the appeal clean, upgraded and homey.

1. Fresh Paint: Adding a new splash of color to your walls can make a big difference! Try painting just a border or doing a faux finish if you’re looking for something more interesting, and choose soothing neutral colors that will increase your home’s value.

2. New Towels: Even just updating you displayed hand towels can give the bathroom a new look, and they are something visitors are sure to notice when they’re washing up!

3. New Shower Curtain: Because it takes up so much visual space in a bathroom, a shower curtain can greatly affect the area’s overall appeal. Try updating yours with one in a soothing palette that goes with your bathroom’s overall color scheme and style.

5. Little Upgrades: Replacing the towel bar, the toilet paper holder and/or the trash can up the style in your bathroom, or you may consider adding an inexpensive towel warmer for a heightened sense of luxury.

When you’re looking to make your home more eco-friendly, the kitchen is the best place to start. Why? According to the U.S. Department of Energy, kitchens account for 41.5 percent of the energy consumption in a home!

In keeping with that idea, here are a handful of green products that can help improve your kitchen:

Biodegradable Trash Bags: Created by Perf Go Green, these kitchen trash bags can be used and thrown away; they’ll be totally broken down within two years. Made of recycled plastics, they are fully biodegradable, making them a smart, green solution for disposing of your kitchen garbage.

Energy-Star Appliances: Appliances with the Energy Star rating are said to offer the best performance with the benefit of energy savings.

New countertops or cabinetry: Today’s building industry offers a variety of eco-friendly materials with which to outfit your kitchen, from concrete to formaldehyde-free to EnviroSLAB. If you’re planning to update your kitchen anyway, why not do it with green products?

For even more eco-friendly kitchen improvements, check out this Buy Owner Blog post from last fall: Green Living: Kitchen.

Most sellers discover several minor repairs that need to be made before they can sell their house. Oftentimes it’s things they’ve lived with for years—closet doors that jump the tracks, doorbells that don’t work, window screens that are torn or faucets that drip if the handle isn’t turned just right. But even if you’ve lived with a broken doorbell for years, a potential buyer won’t want to. So now is the time to do something about it.

To get you started, here are some specific things to focus on as you survey your home for repairs:

• Repair anything that has been visibly damaged: Nicks in walls from that time you moved your desk, corners of the carpet that have pulled away from the wall and woodwork that’s scratched or dented all need to be repaired or replaced before you show your home to prospective buyers.

• Repair anything that isn’t working correctly: Replace burned-out light bulbs, repair the lock on the bathroom door and make sure any electrical outlets that don’t have power are repaired. These items will all come up during a home inspection, so fix them now before potential buyers ever show up at your home.

• Repaint your walls: If you’ve been creative with paint colors, you may want to consider neutralizing your color scheme. Prospective home buyers like to visualize themselves in your home, and if bright red walls scare them silly, they won’t look past them to your home’s best features. Remember, you’re trying to appeal to buyers, even if that contradicts your personal style.

• Repair all doors, especially the front door: When potential home buyers come calling, the first thing they’ll see is your front door. Make sure it’s squeaky clean, with a nicely polished doorknob and a fresh coat of paint or stain (if required) to make it look like new. It’s an inexpensive fix that will make a huge difference to prospective buyers. Check all window screens for damage and replace them if they are torn or ill-fitting. You may also want to add flowers or a decorative wreath for a welcoming entry.

Once you’ve got everything working and usable in your home, you’re that much closer to a successful sale! Take heart that a little work now will lead to payoff later!

About the BuyOwner.com Blog

Founded in 1984, BuyOwner.com® is the leading provider of real estate marketing services. We pioneered the "For Sale by Owner" (FSBO) market, which today represents over 20 percent of all residential real estate transactions.